50s, fashions, lifestyle

I'm loving the site Edgar!

My mother hand made most of my school dresses...this took me back

Did they have cars in the 50's? Or were horses still the vehicle of choice?

Does that really matter where you are, Gus?

The illustrations alone make that site worth a look. I'm still going back to it to try to see all the features.

This a bikini from the 50's

Beats swimwear of the 40s, colorbook.

I have to say that I really hated the little prim caps of tightly controlled hair that women wore in the 50s and the short bangs a la Mamie Eisenhower and Claudette Colbert.

I love 50's style but can imagine how uncomfortable it must have been...a girdle....ick....

If you want pin-up chic have a google at Alberto Vargas.He painted gorgeous ladies in fab clothes like American sweethearts in the 40's/50's.

Yes, It was actually considered "ladylike" to wear a girdle. Pantyhose were liberating in more ways than one.

Thanks Edgar! I'm looking forward to checking out the link from home.

50s fashion? sorry It makes me think of this:

Donna Reed - for mine she was the quintessential 50s woman :wink:

I had a girdle that had satin panels, front and back. In the front were two inch wide steels (to hold in the "tummy") On one side there was a zipper. I remember going to a wedding where there was a LOT of food. By the time the soup arrived, I thought that I was going to die!

No so bad once you got used to it

In 1958, I was 8 and had to wear corduroy pants. I hate corduroy, people heard you comin from half a mile away.

For some reason, when I was about 6, the colors pink and black were big. I had an Easter suit with pinkj shirt and bowtie with everything else black (I believe that was the color scheme) Does any other old coot remember these colors , or were they just a local thing?

In Southeastern Arizona, pink and black were big earlier than that. I remember our wearing pink shirts and black pants with a buckle on the back. I'm not sure of the year, but it must have been before 1957 when I left for military service. I think 1955, or '56. Ducktail haircuts were also a big thing in those days.

When we weren't trying to keep up with cosmopolitan fashion, most of us wore Levis, boots and cowboy shirts. In that part of the country wide brimmed hats never went out of fashion, but in the fifties we wore mostly inexpensive straw from across the line. Many of our Mexican classmates adopted the Pachuco fashions, and there was quite a bit of rivalry between the Anglos and Hispanics.

One evening as a friend and I left the Naval Reserve meeting, we encountered two pretty Mexican classmates and offered to walk them home. One did that sort of thing back then, especially if the hormones were bubbling over. BTW, for some reason the Navy has quite an attraction for country boys in the Southwest. I've forgotten most of what we were wearing, except I remember wearing a light-weight wind-breaker with an eagle on the back. James Dean's "Rebel Without a Cause" was the inspiration and I was trying to be rebellious.

We walked along chatting the girls up, and trying to get beyond holding their hands. My friend noticed that a gang of 7-10 year old Pachuco wannabes were coming up on us from behind. Soon they were taunting us and making threats because we were with Mexican girls. In fact, the girls may have been bait. Anyway, we came to a well lit street corner across the street from one of our gang. I told my friend to hurry across and find us some reinforcements, and I (heroically) would stay and "defended" the girls (visions of appreciation). I backed against a brick wall to protect my back. The gang of little kids (they turned out to be bigger when surrounding me on three sides), began their attack from all sides simultaneously. Someone kicked me behind a knee and I went down. That was tough, but I managed to fight my way back to my feet. The attack continued as I tried to cross the street surrounded by gleeful little beasts. About that time my friends arrived carrying large kitchen knives and rescued me. Valuable lessons were learned, but I paid for them by being bruised for a week. About that time I started going heeled most of the time, and in retrospect that might have been the reason.

The friend mentioned above and I went into the Navy together later that year. We lost touch and later, he committed suicide. Ah, high school wasn't it fun? This October there will be a 47th year reunion of DHS students. We intend attending the reunion, the first since I left 48 years ago.

I was a tad young for the pink fad, and a bit out of fashion, but, I do recall the pink and black and ducktail hair.